Bill Clinton Says 'Paint Your Roofs White' 722
Hugh Pickens writes "Former President Bill Clinton thinks 'every black roof in New York should be white; every roof in Chicago should be white; every roof in Little Rock should be white. Every flat tar-surface roof anywhere! In most of these places you could recover the cost of the paint and the labor in a week.' Noting that Mayor Bloomberg started a program to hire and train young people to paint New York's roofs white, Clinton says a big percentage of the kids have been able to parlay this simple work into higher-skilled training programs or energy-related retrofit jobs. The benefit: not only will 'cool roofs' lower the utility bill in every apartment house 10 to 20 percent, but it frees cash that can be spent to increase economic growth. Clinton presented this with fourteen additional ideas for growing the economy, saving energy, and attacking the jobs crisis."
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't. He's talking about flat roofs.
Saves a lot of money (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:wait a second... (Score:2, Insightful)
No. You will have to paint them black for the night, and white for the day.
Black not only absorbs heat more efficiently, it also emits heat more efficiently.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:3, Insightful)
What will white roofs do in the winter? Make the building colder?
I think it costs more to cool down than to heat up, but what happens if power goes out and there is no chimney?
Is the cost savings there after taking this into consideration or not?
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break this to you, but if you do own your house, you will end up putting a new roof on it sooner or later. My guess, given your tone, is that it will be sooner than you think it will.
Now would be a good time to bring this up with your home owners association so you can make the best choice when that time finally comes.
Re:Bill Clinton is a fucking lawyer! (Score:5, Insightful)
Also heating (especially if it's via a new gas furnace, even the cheaper models are running over 90%, so efficient their chimneys can be made out of PVC pipe) is MUCH more efficient than even the best AC unit.
Great. Just Great (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't believe me? What do you think of the notion of filling your tires up a little more to improve fuel efficiency?
Re:Can't we get a color-changing paint? (Score:5, Insightful)
No white is still better in the winter. Black roofing causes excessive melting of the snow during daylight leading to iced up gutters and ice dams at night which end up causing major water damage.
Clinton was actually good with money (Score:1, Insightful)
Changing shingle coloring is not a new idea, on that note, nobody's done it either. In fact none of the stuff on the list is new, but... why is this guy still politically active? Because people listen to him, he SHRUNK our national debt, something that seems in a different dimension after Bush America. The only problem is the lack of motivation to do any of this, I'm not going to go get paint, get on my roof and paint because I read this. I'd only consider letting the government do it, perhaps an energy tax credit or a waiting list?
Ideas are useless without a path to get them done.
Economic Growth? (Score:1, Insightful)
The benefit: not only will 'cool roofs' lower the utility bill in every apartment house 10 to 20 percent, but it frees cash that can be spent to increase economic growth.
So, money that is spent on heating costs doesn't have any effect on the economy? Where does that money go then?
Now, I'm all in favor of reducing energy usage, and lowering costs for the average person, but to say this will create economic growth seems a bit silly. No new money is generated by this, just shifted. It merely reduces money going into one industry, and divides among others (including the makers of white paint).
In fact, if this promotes more people to *save* money (and not spend it at all), it could even potentially slow economic growth.
Re:Sooooo...by Slick Willy's Logic.... (Score:4, Insightful)
...all roofs in New York should also be painted black in winter, because damnit, it gets cold in New York in winter.
During the winter, day is shorter than night, and your house is always heated to ~70F (both day and night). Hence, your roof will radiate energy for longer period (night) than it would absorb the energy (day). And black bodies radiate energy better than white ones. Conclusion is that it is better to have white roof during the winter.
Re:Doing this with any random White Paint, is a wa (Score:2, Insightful)
this conclusion is wrong and based on a common misconception that heat is always IR.
yes, but wrt absorption, you don't just care about IR, you care about all wavelengths. it's a common misconception that heat is only about IR. at Earth-ambient temps and for the case of emission, yes... but energy absorbed at any wavelength will be converted to thermal energy. That's why active solar heaters collector surfaces are designed to be dark and not light.
Re:Great, so how the hell do I paint ashalt shingl (Score:4, Insightful)
HOAs make one "neighbor from hell" into many "neighbors from hell".
Uniformity in housing is an appeal to create an aesthetic of order where it really doesn't exist. Life isn't tidy no matter how your dress it up.
Yea, I take his advice like I take Gores (Score:1, Insightful)
Not all.
You want a white roof when you life in the south, where heating in the winter isn't a big deal, but cooling in the summer is, so you want to make your cooling lower.
You want a dark roof when you life up north as its far more effective to help the heating than it is to worry about the few times during the summer when you need cooling.
And more importantly, recoating the roof for a multistory building is only going to have an effect on the upper floor, not those below it ... which aren't exposed to sunlight, so you won't get a 10-20% savings across the building, only on the upper floor. That doesn't mean its not worth doing, it almost certainly is if your roof color is the wrong one for where you live.
My point? Clintons ignorant simplistic view is a shining example of why you don't ever listen to advice from has-been politicians such as himself and his vice president.
I've got only one question: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got only one question:
What are the colors of the roofs on Clinton's various properties?